A cybercrime case related to defamation and harassment was registered against Amit Roy (name changed) by a 24 year old woman named Kirti Singh in August 2016. The report said that Roy with the intensions to defame girl, hacked into her Facebook account in order to digitally alter pictures and sent objectionable messages to her friends. This case was taken up by cyber cell for investigation.

The Cyber cell took help of an ethical hacking group, whose members had interned with the police department. The group of engineering students of a private university helped the police in breaking through victim’s laptop password. Later, both investigative officers and ethical hackers found that the laptop had been formatted and all files were deleted. Still, the ethical hackers made use of a specialized set of tools and software to retrieve data that showed allegations were true. Later Roy confessed to morphing victims pictures as a result of bitter relationship that ended.

The usage of ethical hacking can help in solving cybercrime at a faster pace.

The Cybercrime cell of Gurgaon police got 2, 402 complaints, this figure didn’t stop here as it has already reached 358 mark. The Gurgaon police have assembled with the cyber experts last year and also started taking assistance from ethical hackers group of The NorthCap University.

In another case, the group of hackers illegally accessed account and an amount of 5 Lakh was immediately withdrawn. The cyber cell and hackers are working together to identified that the complainants mobile phone had a malicious application installed that helped criminals to gain access of her banking details. The app installed in her mobile had access to her private messages and automatically deleted messages from her bank to alter her on pretext of fraudulent transactions.

There are many instances that show the collaboration of ethical hackers with the police to crack cases and grab criminals.

Phishing attack is commonly used by hackers to retrieve confidential information. This involves sending a message through an electronic medium i.e. email, text messages etc to obtain personal or sensitive details like passwords, e-wallet, username, credit/debit card details for the malevolent reasons.

The other member of ethical hacker group Lakshay Mathur says that the best defence against the malicious attackers is not to be lured by spurious messages.

In order to be safe and secure, the ethical hacker group suggest users to check privacy settings on social media sites; to think before posting pictures or financial information online; turn off mobile’s GPS location when not in use; respect net privacy and be cautious while talking with the strangers on computer network.